Main Links

Monday, September 7, 2015

After the day 5 estimation warm-up and students self-correcting their homework, we dove right in to the Desmos activity Polygraph: Points by Robert Kaplinsky. I thought we'd have time to do Match my Pattern after, but boy was I mistaken.

So the premise is this: it's like Guess Who. You pick a graph of a point out of 16 possibilities. You are paired with someone in the class digitally. Then your partner must type you questions with yes or no answers so they can eliminate graphs to narrow it down to the correct one. I can monitor it on my screen.

For my second period class, they experienced the frustration of their peers not using specific language. Sometimes students would ask questions if it was in a certain quadrant, and since some did not know how quadrants were numbered, they'd answer incorrectly. Or it wasn't specific like is the point positive. Some students helped each other and I would repeat questions from the screen aloud to get their reaction.

Halfway through the period, I asked the students to close their laptop screens and get their composition books and pencil ready. I facilitated a discussion about the coordinate plane by relating it to the algebra walk from yesterday. I encouraged students to call out to move along the discussion so they could go back to the game armed with new vocabulary tools.

Me: Where did we all start standing outside during the algebra walk?
S: The x-axis.
Me: What type of line is that?
S: Horizontal.
Me: (discussion about the word horizon being in the word, the sun rises and sets out on the ocean when you look at the horizon)
Me: What's missing from our graph?
S: The y-axis
Me: Where should I put it, left middle right?
S: Middle
Me: OK. What's that point that I jumped on yesterday and asked you about?
S: The origin. (0,0)
Me: What happens to the numbers as I go right? And what type are they?
S: They go up. They are positive.
Me: And backwards?
S: They are negative.
(repeat for y-axis.)

Me: When there are more than 1 axis, the plural is axes. How many sections are there when the axes cross?
S: 4.
Me: What are they called?
S: Quadrants
Me: See how the root of the word is quad. You go out on an ATV Quad. How many wheels does it have? 4.

Me: So, how do we know how they are numbered? And how can we remember?

So a student Estefany had a great contribution: It starts at 1 at the top right, and moves in a direction of a letter C. We talked about counterclockwise and also roman numerals. Great discussion. I also asked them to identify points. I asked if the order of the numbers mattered. They told me its (x,y).

I asked Justin about a situation. Basically a student eliminated the origin after they had asked is it on the x axis to which he had answered yes. It also brought he question what quadrant is the origin in? Some kids thought all 4. Some thought none. Then some agreed it was on both the x and the y axes which also allowed me to introduce them to the plural form of axis.

Here's video of him explaining it:

Overall this activity really involved a lot of discourse between students between them and myself, and even our digital coach Patrick who admitted to the class he was rusty on how the quadrants are numbered. He asked the class what did they think he did? He said he googled it. Definitely a nice point to make in our Information Age.

Here's Darren describing the difference between 2 points:

In the accelerated class students did not play polygraph. They worked on Jon Orr's Desmos activity called Match my Pattern. Students refreshed completing a table and writing a rule for it to connect the points on the graph with a line.

It also prompted them to describe figure 2 when given 1 and 3 and also how many were in step 73. Once again myself and the students could see each other's answers after submitting.

The second activity was Match my Line which is snuck away in the activity builder section of the web site. Match my pattern was a great lead in to this activity by Michael Fenton. Students had to remind each other how to find slope between two lines. Another student thought there was an error but then realized he forgot the x variable in his equation.

It was great to see students refresh on slope before we get back into it. I will definitely be doing polygraph: parabolas with this class soon before the textbook introduces them to the vocabulary of vertex line of symmetry and more.

Neither class had time to try Tile Pile, but since I still have the laptops in my room, on Tuesday I can have them do Tile Pile while I assign them textbooks after the warmup.